NY Times: "Recipients of stock options, the 1990's prescription for instant wealth, are learning that options can come back to bite them."

I've been included in an email back and forth betw Eric Kidd and Joshua Allen. They're two guys in their 20s who I have so much admiration for, my heart almost bursts. You could try to put labels on them, one is open source, the other works at Microsoft, but there would be no point to that, because the labels carry connotations that don't begin to tell you who they are. The power between these two men, who almost no one has heard of, is so incredible. There's a background to Allchin's comments about Linux that I didn't know anything about. Eric is very protective of Linux, but doesn't wish to do anyone any harm. Joshua was a Linux developer who went to Microsoft because he didn't agree with the political direction Linux was taking. Eric did XML-RPC for C. Joshua is determined to get OPML into Microsoft products. These are two people I am proud to work with. Yet one is rooted in open source and the other gets his paycheck from Bill Gates. These are young men, from my point of view, but they're acting more responsibly than people my own age. This is backwards. I am ashamed of what my generation has done to split the technology world along idealogical lines. I see Josh and Eric as symbols of the next generation and they deserve a clean slate.

Now, for the first time in my career, peace is the number one issue in the technology industry. Today the peace process seems so strong, but you gotta know it's really fragile. There are hot-heads on all sides who would like to divide things up along new lines. They must see an opportunity to win big, or a threat that they're headed for the scrap heap, or both at the same time. Something new is definitely coming. The question is, will it be a battlefield or will we have interop? Can we have competition that doesn't destroy the playing field? If you weren't in SF at the P2P conf, I wish you could see how bright the geeks are in this generation. I'd like to believe that nothing can stop them, but I know that's not true. So we all have to make a conscious decision, if you're in technology, do you want more war, or do you want to build?

I also wish you could all hear the speech that Shimon Peres made at Davos last year. He explained that if you want economic growth you must have peace. Looking at it from this perspective, it's ridiculous that the tech industry is in a downturn while Moore's Law is still inexorably putting so much power on our desktops and in our servers, and we now have a networking infrastructure that few would have dreamed of ten years ago. That we're in a contraction is evidence, imho, that we've played our hand badly.

8/12/97: "As boys grow older and become men our view of the world changes. We learn that we are not the greatest primate in the jungle, that other people have greatness too. And if our youth was productive, we learn that we have a stake in the bigger picture. We learn to love the jungle, we want it to survive, we develop an appreciation for chaos."

Lance: "Here's evidence, if any were needed, that my suggestion of a year ago that everyone in Davos should be given a webpage to write a weblog would be far more interesting than giving them iPAQs or whatever."

And here's a joke. How many Californians does it take to screw in a lighbulb? (Answer tomorrow.)

Dylan Tweney on the P2P conf: "So, what's the business model for this thing? Who knows? Who cares! This is cool!"

Jeffrey Jones suggests Dancing in the Street as the theme song for P2P. Listening to it now. "It doesn't matter what you wear as long as you are there.." Nice.

WSJ: "The Internetís phone book is up for sale ó and though the listings may represent a treasure trove for marketers, the move also risks a serious privacy backlash."

Josh Allen on the Allchin freakout: "Having a Microsoft executive say that Linux is an intellectual property killer is probably the best compliment (and validation) that Richard Stallman can get."

Zeldman: "The site you're now reading is six years old, contains thousands of pages and millions of non-standard workarounds, and will be upgraded to full standards compliance as soon as we can find the time to do it."

To me, today's Zeldman is an ad for Manila. It's not that we didn't try to explain, but you don't need to force a browser upgrade to get content separated from form. It can all be done simply, on the server, using a browser-based CMS like Manila. Other software would do here too, like Blogger or Free-Conversant. It hurts to see Zeldman struggle when it could be so much easier for him. Even worse, he's bringing his struggle to users. Hello. Working together isn't just for the gorillas, it's also high time the designers and geeks to work together too.

Charles Cooper: "I still think Push can yet make a big mark in the digital music market as a download and delivery technology."

Payloads for RSS. "What if, in the middle of the night, while I'm not using my computer, it downloads huge video and audio stuff to my local hard drive. Then when I arrive in the morning there are fresh bits, news clips, a song of the day, whatever, provided by all kinds of content providers, from big TV networks like CNN and MSNBC, to a Dutch school where kids are taking a film class using inexpensive video recorders and iMacs."